Climate Climate & Energy

Or a new way forward?

File this under possibly hopeful news: Researchers at Purdue are calling an approach that gasifies biomass to make liquid fuels a "hybrid hydrogen-carbon process," or H2CAR. Read the article for the straight scoop, but it's basically adding hydrogen to biomass from a "carbon-free" energy source (solar? wind? nukes?), via gasification.

The process would be more efficient than current biofuel production because it'd suppress the formation of carbon dioxide and convert all of the carbon atoms to fuel. Is it just hot air? And if this process is powered by nukes, that's a whole new question.

Come on, Drudge. You can do better

Al Gore is testifying on Capitol Hill twice on Wednesday -- before John Dingell's House Energy and Commerce Committee and Barbara Boxer's Senate Environment Committee. According to the Drudge Report (link may only be temporary), "Proposed questions for Gore, which are circulating behind-the-scenes, have been obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT -- questions that could lead Gore scrambling for answers!"

Here are the questions, which would not cause a fifth grader to scramble, but I am flattered to make the list:

2006, the year global warming came into focus

Steve Connor from the U.K.'s The Independent summarized what we learned in 2006 with the article "Review of the year: Global warming," subheaded with, "Our worst fears are exceeded by reality."

Somewhere, Stalin Is Chuckling

Siberian mine disaster kills more than 100, rescuers search for survivors The world may be addicted to oil, but it’s coal that’s doing us in. An explosion at a Siberian coal mine on Monday killed 106 workers, and rescuers were still searching for a handful of missing people today. While 93 lucky bastards escaped with […]

Tedious

Two meteorologists say that climate scientists are "overplaying" the climate threat (which they concede is real and urgent). Another scientist responds that, yeah, we shouldn’t overplay the threat, but the threat is real and urgent. As so often with this immeasurably vapid debate, the slightest bit of scrutiny reveals that there is very little substantive […]

Aren’t You Glad You Use Dial?

World sweats through warmest winter on record Congratulations, global citizens, for weathering the warmest winter in the Northern Hemisphere since record-keeping began in 1880. From December to February, combined land and ocean temperatures were 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average, says a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study published Friday in Science. El Niño helped make […]

Blue Monday

Russia’s going nuclear, the U.S. is going nowhere, and Cambodia’s going wild We hope you had a chance to relax this weekend, to cast aside your cares and spend hours soaking in the jasmine-scented bubble bath of life. Because now it’s back to the putrid mudbath of reality. From Russia comes news that the country […]

Debunking the ‘water vapor’ nonsense

On March 8, the Newport Daily News published a commentary that recycled one of the stalest skeptical arguments around: because water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide must be unimportant.

This is incorrect, of course, and has been debunked on several blogs (e.g., here).

In response to this, my colleague Chris Reddy and I wrote this response, published March 16:

Can Al Gore’s message be tailored for kids?

Can Al Gore’s message be tailored for kids? Lisa Shimizu thinks so. Over the past few months, Shimizu has been developing a version of the Inconvenient Truth slideshow that would be easily understood by and engaging for children. After testing it out on captive audiences ranging from her 8-year-old daughter Aya to a classroom full […]

Facts alone will never cut it

I want to tear my %$#@! hair out. On Wed. night in New York City, there was a formal debate. At issue was the statement, "global warming is not a crisis." David Biello sets the scene: Arguing for the motion were the folksy (and tall) Michael Crichton, the soft-spoken Richard Lindzen and the passionate Philip […]